GameStop’s ‘Staplegate’ Nintendo Switch Fetches $250,000 In Auction, 500x Its Original Price

GameStop’s “Staplegate” Nintendo Switch 2 gaming console just fetched 500 times its original price, after a listing on eBay attracted nearly 300 bids.

GameStop’s shares were up more than 1% at the time of writing. Stocktwits data showed the retail sentiment around the stock was in the ‘bullish’ territory.

The $250,000 that GameStop fetched from the eBay auction of the punctured Switch 2 will go toward charity, earning the video game retailer free viral marketing as well as brownie points for promising to donate the proceeds to a charity.

To make the experience complete, GameStop also bundled the stapler as well as the staple that was “carefully extracted and preserved” by the company.

The controversy erupted after a GameStop employee stapled the receipts for the Switch 2 console on the box a bit too enthusiastically. This damaged the screens of some of the consoles, and some buyers took to the social media platform X to post photos showing holes in their console displays.

 While GameStop apologized for the incident, the company also leveraged it to raise money for a charity in the name of Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.

“Basically, it turned into a collectible,” GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen told CNBC in an interview on Tuesday.

Cohen went a step further and said if the auction bids reach seven figures, he would fly the winner to Miami and hand over his underwear personally to them.

GameStop, the meme stock of 2021, has seen its shares decline by nearly 25% year-to-date and 18% over the past 12 months.

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